I thought about calling this post “ruminations” but one meaning of that word is to think seriously or deeply and another meaning is a cow chewing her cud slowly, swallowing, burping and chewing again. I don’t much care for the picture of me chewing over my thoughts. And I’m not sure my meditations are that deep but they are coursing through my head like bees swarming around a hive and I have a feeling the only way to capture them is to write them.
I heard someone say on a television program yesterday that the 1950s was a more wholesome era than today; a time of hope and innocence, and since I grew up during that time, I am inclined to agree. I wore bobby sox, penny loafers, saddle shoes (boy, they were hard to polish), can-cans, pony tails and blue jeans. My jeans were rolled up because they were too long, not because that was fashionable. And sometimes I wore them rolled to just below the knees. When I bought a new pair, you can bet they did not come with ready-made holes, for goodness sake!
I guess I was a tomboy because I liked to ride horses, climb trees, and play ball. However, I also liked to read and write and draw. The piano figured big in my girlhood. I played hymns and recital pieces but I also learned to play by ear “The Beer Barrel Polka”, “The Tennessee Waltz” and “The Stars and Stripes Forever.”
My little brother and I watched and listened to Hopalong Cassidy, The Lone Ranger, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Sky King and The Mickey Mouse Club. We had heroes. The good guys were good and they always won; the bad guys were bad and lost in a big way. We believed that Right and Truth always triumphed.
Grown ups were respected. Talking back to my parents? Unheard of. I said “Please”, “Excuse me”, and “May I”. I believed my parents were the best in the world and although we had very little money and I might have longed for more, I never wanted any parent other than my own. For many years I was positive that my dad was always, entirely, unfailingly, irrevocably and on every occasion, right. If nobody else in all the world had the same opinion as my dad, they were all wrong and I wondered why he was the only one who stood for Truth.
Knowledge has increased dramatically in the last fifty or sixty years but has happiness kept pace? With technology, the whole world is within reach. If I want to know the answer to a question, I Ask Jeeves. He always knows. People rush around a lot today. We hurry to finish one job so we can do something else. But somehow, with all the “modern conveniences” and technological helpers, we never have enough time.
So sometimes I indulge in an old person’s prerogative, I look back. And sigh. And remember. Today’s children probably consider the 1950s The Dark Ages. But there were good things. We might not have had all the knowledge of today but we had innocence. We didn’t have computers but we had television and radios and they were fun! Perhaps we didn’t know the world of adults was a complicated place, not always completely good or completely bad but, hey! We had heroes.
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